AWS – What Is Cloud Computing and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?

If you have been working in IT for a while, you have probably heard the word Cloud hundreds of times. Companies are moving their applications, databases, servers, and entire infrastructures to the cloud. But what does “the Cloud” actually mean? Is it some kind of magic place on the Internet where our applications live?

Not really.

In simple terms, cloud computing means using computing resources over the Internet instead of owning and managing all the physical hardware yourself. Instead of buying a server, installing it in your own server room, connecting it to a network, configuring storage, and worrying about hardware failures, you can rent these resources from a cloud provider and use them whenever you need them.

One of the biggest and most well-known cloud providers in the world is Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In this article, we will take a step back from commands and complicated AWS services and answer some basic questions:

What exactly is Cloud Computing?
Why do companies use the Cloud?
What is AWS?
When and why was AWS created?
Why did AWS become so important?
What is the difference between a traditional server and a cloud server?
And finally, what does AWS actually give us as IT professionals?

Let's start from the beginning.